My P.G. Wodehouse Summer
This article recently appeared in the Spectator. I hope you will enjoy it.
Normally I model myself on one of the more retiring of the Desert Fathers, as much as a man living in England with six children can, so I rarely venture out. But this summer I could have given Galahad Threepwood a run for his money in the socialising stakes. Not that a Desert Father would have objected to my visit to Wimbledon to the papal nunciature, where the nuncio was celebrating the papacy of Leo XIV. It is reassuring to have a Pope who believes in the papal office and, with luck, the traditional liturgies will no longer be persecuted. The hatred for the Latin Mass is a peculiarity of a few ageing liberals. Fortunately, young Catholics, including my nephew David who is a seminarian, are flocking to the Old Rite.
Wimbledon, as P.G. Wodehouse aficionados know, is Ukridge territory. His Aunt Julia lived there, and I am taking a leaf out of his book by keeping quails in Somerset. I bought a few to get started but now want to breed some more. Mr Bezos, despite being so busy with his nuptials, has kindly delivered an incubator and other essentials so I hope to do a bit better than Ukridge did with his chickens or indeed his proposed duck farm. I must see if I can get a pig next.
The Conservative party may be short of votes but Conservatism is brimming over with ideas. Leading the charge is Radomir Tylecote at the Prosperity Institute, formerly Legatum, and I was honoured to be asked to speak at its summer party. I was the warm-up act for Nigel Farage who, along with Boris and this magazine’s editor, you never want to follow. I argued we need to reunite the right; he demurred, but at the next election we need a mandate in votes as well as a majority of seats. One without the other ends in tears, as Keir Starmer is discovering.
In eight years at educational establishments on the Thames I never once went on the river, but since my son Thomas has taken up rowing – he is the cox for an Eton crew – I am beginning to learn about it. Indeed, I have been taught the difference between rowing and sculling and with this new knowledge I greatly enjoyed my first visit to the Henley Regatta. It was a perfect day, warm but not too hot, in the company of long-standing friends. It is a wonderfully English event, everyone is properly dressed with the happy sensation of being transported, in my case forward, to the Victorian era. Although the trains would have worked better in those days.
Returning to London, my wife Helena and I set off to The Spectator’s summer party. As we sauntered along Old Queen Street we bumped into the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. I first met him many years ago when he greeted me saying: ‘You don’t even think I am a bishop.’ It was a point I had not intended to make but it is a reminder that Leo XIII was the pope of Apostolicae Curae as well as Rerum Novarum. As it happens, Welby was not going to the party last week, but I was glad to see him as I had not done so since he resigned. I feel he has been harshly treated and is fundamentally a holy man. The scandal of abuse, in all walks of life but especially the churches, is not ameliorated by finding scapegoats who were not in charge at the time.
The Spectator puts on a fine party but, like my late father, I am not good at mingling and tend to stand in a corner fiddling with my cufflinks in the hope that people will take pity on me and come to say hello. Fortunately they did, and my glass seemed to be topped up after each sip. Pol Roger, in this case, or Bollinger, which I tend to serve at home, make a party jolly and are much to be encouraged. Meanwhile, Helena, who is more socially adept, managed to speak to everyone including Nigel Farage and the editor. She could fill me in on the political gossip as we went home.
When I was an MP, Fridays were always busy with constituency duties. Now they are quite quiet, so it seemed like old times when the friends of Cameley Church came to see me. They are fundraising to preserve the remarkable medieval wall paintings of this wonderful 12th-century church. When I was Lord President of the Council I watched the list of burial grounds to be closed attentively as Cameley is quite full and I plan to end up in the church yard where generations of Moggs and Rees-Moggs are buried. On the day of the bodily resurrection, I expect we will all pop up and fiddle with our cufflinks before ruminating on the beautiful Somerset countryside.
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Such an illuminating and enjoyable take of an English point in time. Thank you.
If you do get a pig, what Wodehousian name will you give her?